


swear you'll never show a soul again

by girljustdied



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2019-10-04 20:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17311001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girljustdied/pseuds/girljustdied
Summary: three summers.  three secrets.





	swear you'll never show a soul again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ever_neutral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ever_neutral/gifts).



> prompt was “you’re all losing love.”

In the summer, Lilly tells none of her secrets.  
  
“Oh, I bet it’s just killing you, isn’t it, V?”  
  
Veronica picks absentmindedly at a hole in her jeans in a way that drives Lilly absolutely crazy. So Lilly finds a pair of leftover, dull scissors from elementary school with “LK” still boldly marked on the handle, and they cut them into shorts.  
  
“Not so high,” Veronica’s voice a whine of pleasure at being the focus of Lilly’s attention. “No, you’re gonna make it so the pockets stick out from the bottom!”  
  
“Exactly, Veronica Mars. Exactly.” She licks her lips, “Now you must model my greatest creation! And I have to warn you, I expect nothing less than perfection on the runway.”  
  
Veronica parades around Lilly’s room with an uncharacteristic sway of her hips, pausing in silly, contorted poses for imaginary runway photographers.  
  
“ _Super_ ,” Lilly affects a French accent for the superlative. “Ugh, all this work has got me starved, let’s go raid the fridge—and give Duncan and Logan a little show.” Veronica darts over to look through the closet in response, and an uneasy, irritated feeling flares up in Lilly, “Uh, what are you doing?”  
  
It has to be like, the biggest standoff over a pair of cut-offs ever.  
  
When Veronica finally responds, it’s like she doesn’t even realize how completely boring she can be: “Looking for something to wear.”  
  
“You are wearing something.”  
  
“You know what I mean.”  
  
Lilly cannot even muster the energy to huff and cross her arms over her chest or roll her eyes. She watches Veronica change with a lazy, unfocused gaze, mind miles away.  
  
-  
  
In the summer, Veronica has no secrets.  
  
_“Please, please, please just tell me why,”_ the words echo in her mind even though she’s long past saying them aloud—long past asking anyone for anything.

Lilly’s grave is too quiet, and Veronica rips up blades of grass like tiny offerings of chaos to fill the void.  
  
“Duncan’s too swell to say it,” Logan’s voice pops up from behind her, “but you showing up here all the time is quickly moving from pathetic to pathological territory.”  
  
“Well, I hate to get all primary school on you, but it’s a free country, and this right here?” She pats the earth, “Public property.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I’m sure you’d know all about being public property, huh?”  
  
Veronica stays put, nails digging little crescent-shaped indentations into her bare thighs, and watches Logan touch a miniature bottle of vodka to Lilly’s headstone before opening and downing it all in one long swallow.

“You’re the one that’s pathetic,” she finally manages to spit out, finally manages to stand to leave. “Lilly broke up with you. She hated you. But here you are.”

“And here you are,” he smiles grimly. “Desperately trying to run into your ex.”

Veronica speaks without thinking, “Duncan never comes here and you know it.”

Logan carelessly tosses the bottle onto the grass near her feet as he turns to leave. Veronica crushes it under her boot and into the earth.

Duncan, she imagines, doesn’t even blink.  
  
-  
  
In the summer, Logan tells all his secrets.  
  
“I used to think of the first time I kissed you,” he marches the fingertips of his index and middle fingers up the line of her throat, “As the moment I started letting go of Lilly.”  
  
“Huh,” Veronica plays at being nonplussed.  
  
“Huh,” Logan echoes, presses his mouth to her jaw fleetingly but firmly enough to punctuate his response.  
  
“Imagine that,” her voice is strained just enough for him to register it.  
  
“Veronica,” he touches the light blush on her cheek. Not prodding. Never that.  
  
“Used to think,” she quotes his words back to him, “Meaning you don’t anymore?”  
  
“Would we be here like this if it wasn’t for Lilly?” And then he amends, “If it wasn’t for what happened to Lilly?” And then, unspoken, _if it wasn’t for what my fucking father did to Lilly?_

Unthought, _if it wasn’t for what Lilly did with my fucking father?_ And further and further down that spiral until it’s just Logan and Veronica and an ocean of liability. (And the Kanes. Always the Kanes.)  
  
Would they be here like this without all that?  
  
Veronica’s almost, just barely, just tantalizingly apologetic, “No.” After a shallow breath, she continues of her own accord, “Sometimes hating you was the only thing that kept me going. Kept me fighting for answers. After.”  
  
“Forgive me?”  
  
“No.” And her crooked smile doesn’t negate her next words, simply twists them into something that only seems to exist between him and her, “I don’t. I don’t forgive you.”  
  
Oh, such sweet nothings.  
  
It takes more courage than he’d like to break the moment, to mutter back, “I don’t forgive you, either. Not for anything.”  
  
Veronica frowns. Her eyelids flutter shut, and she turns her face away.


End file.
